WOLVES are on the move now, for when the snow is deep food is hard to get and they are hungry and savage. We hear them at Cache Lake, but not as much as further north in the Thunder Lake country, where the Chief has a trap line. I usually go along with him and while he looks to his traps I strike across to the logging camp to see how the cutting is going.
Fire burned over part of this section a few years ago and left a desolate and lonely ridge covered with the white skeletons of standing dead trees. That is what they call dryki, a shortening of “dry-kill timber”—trees killed by fire, but still standing. Dry-ki has also come to mean timber killed by the backwater when they raise the level of the lakes for lumbering. We call the place the Graveyard and it is the kind of country wolves like, for it borders on a swamp where the deer winter. If wolves can drive a deer out into the jackpots of tangled timber and slash they usually get it.
One night when we made camp half a day north of Cache Lake the big gray critters began their howling in the hills where Lost Chief Stream runs through the Graveyard country. Now, there is nothing friendly in the howl of a wolf, yet I find something strangely beautiful in his quavering song, especially on a still cold night. If a man is given to feeling lonely in the woods the howling of a wolf can bring it on about as fast as anything, but I’m not bothered that way. At first there was only one wolf, but he made himself heard all right. Soon another started, then a third and fourth joined in, and their chorus came to us strong and clear on a breeze that barely slanted the smoke of our fire.
Well we knew that the deer and the moose for miles around that night were hearing the wolf-song and moving closer together, listening uneasily and searching the air with lifted heads and quivering nostrils for a trace of the scent they dread more than any other. Along the creeks the white hares stopped nibbling the bark of tender saplings and scurried for cover, and a mouse hunting for seeds among the dead weeds on top of the snow would dive into his hole under a stump. Only the lynx, crouching on the limb of a spruce in wait for a rabbit, would pay no attention.
Chief Tibeash, sitting on his blankets on a deep bed of balsam boughs by the fire, grunted in disgust and began cutting little chips from a plug of black tobacco. Rolling them in his palm with the heel of his brown hand, he filled his pipe and reached for a glowing ember. He listened to the wolves for a long time and frowned when one of them, having stopped for a few minutes, began howling again just like a man joining a quartet at the wrong place in the song.
What bothered the Chief was that the wolves were in his trapping territory and might cost him some fine skins. As it was the weather had been colder than usual with a spell of twenty below zero or lower for ten days without a break. A long stretch of cold weather during the short days of midwinter is likely as not to keep the animals pretty close to home with the result that the trapper’s catch may drop off.
I asked the Chief if he had ever known a wolf to attack a man. He had heard of many such attacks, he said, but none were true so far as he could find out. He agreed that wolves will trail you and sometimes circle a camp for hours, but more from curiosity than anything else, he thinks. You hear them all winter, but mighty seldom actually see the animals.
Some people would have you believe that wolves run in large packs. According to what I know, and the Chief agrees, six or seven would be a large number to see together. Four or five is more common and often they are all members of the same family—father, mother, and several one- or two-year-olds. But even three wolves can make a noise that sounds like ten, which probably accounts for some of the yarns you hear.
Springs from behind and hamstrings it
Born in April or early May, young wolves romp and play with all the fun of dog puppies. The old folks feed them faithfully, but it’s not long before they begin to teach the youngsters to hunt for themselves. Smart critters, they are, too. Working as a team, wolves will soon bring down a deer if the snow is deep, but with good footing a deer can usually outrun them. Sometimes a wolf will go for the throat, throwing the deer head over heels. Another way is for one or two wolves to run close to the deer’s head to keep its attention while another springs from behind and hamstrings it by cutting the tendon in the hind leg. After that a deer hasn’t a chance.
I would say that most wolves weigh somewhere between seventy and eighty pounds, though quite a few go up to a hundred and thirty or more, and they average about two feet high at the shoulder. Mostly they are a mixture of brown and gray in color, but some are a creamy white, while others are what you might call black.
We were camping well north of Faraway See Hill and the stars looked down on us like the sparkling eyes of millions of curious children. The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, slashed the northern sky into thin bands of rose and yellow and ghostly green that reached from the earth high among the stars. They were always moving, suddenly rushing across the sky, rising and falling, then fading to a dim glow only to flare up again to flow across the night, a wide river of rippling light. The Chief said it reminded him of the young people he used to watch in his boyhood when they danced in the light of the fires against the dark forest. And the soft swishing noise you hear when the lights are strong was like the sound of their deerskin clothes as they moved about. The old man likes to watch the northern lights and says it must be rainbows dancing in the night. Even the wolves stopped howling and for a while the only sound we heard was the cracking of the frost in the trees.
Sleeping out in the open when the temperature is below zero is no hardship if you have the right outfit and stick by a few simple rules. All we had with us was our blankets, grub, and cooking utensils, which consisted of a pail, frying pan, cups, and tin plates.
We carried our outfit on the Chief’s hunting sled, which looks like a narrow toboggan and is common among the Indian trappers of the north. It is nothing more than two hand-hewn maple, ash, or birch boards about half an inch thick, held in place by four crosspieces with rawhide lashing, and curved up at the front by steaming over a slow fire in wet moss or cloth. Seven or eight feet long and about a foot wide, this narrow sled is so flexible it seems to flow over the rough places in the trail and easily snakes between trees and brush in heavily wooded country. There’s not a nail or a peg in it, and the load is lashed on by thongs running through loops fastened to the ends of the crosspieces.
Although dogs are often hitched to hunting sleds, the Chief never takes them out on the trap line. They disturb the game, leave a scent that makes the wild things extra cautious for a long time, and sometimes get into the traps. So we hauled the sled with a long double moosehide thong with a wide section at the loop to put over the forehead to spell our shoulders once in a while—same idea as a tump line. There are more ways than one of using your head in the woods. The Chief taught me years ago that the first thing to do when you make camp is to turn your sled or toboggan on its side if loaded, or on end if empty, so the runners won’t freeze to the snow and will be free of frost in the morning. It is a good idea to scrape the runners clean when you stop for the night, for there is nothing harder to pull than a sled with frosted runners.
You think of sleds or toboggans being used only on snow and ice, but once when I was traveling along the shore of the St. Lawrence River close to where it widens to meet the sea I saw people sliding down the high sandy cliffs on toboggans and skis. The beach was very narrow and when they hit the bottom the toboggan skimmed out on the water quite a way. I have heard of people sliding and skiing on dry grass, too. When I was young I took one of my mother’s best big trays to slide down a hill under the tall pines where the ground was covered several inches deep with dry and slippery needles. It was grand sport.
We spent two nights on the trail to the Chief’s cabin on Thunder Lake, circling wide to cover part of his trap line on the way. The first day out we crossed a black spruce swamp and saw signs that deer and moose had been feeding on the cedar tips. The paths in their yards are not packed down like most trails, but are a series of large holes formed when they step in the same places as they move back and forth. On the edge of the swamps we came on the trail of a fox and followed it to the base of a big spruce where it had pounced on a partridge sleeping under the snow. A few scattered feathers and a bright red stain told the story of the never-ending battle for life in the forest. If snow falls after a partridge dives into the white cover its hiding place is fairly secure; otherwise it leaves a sign and scent on the surface.
As usual in winter travel we followed the waterways whenever we could, for the going on lakes and rivers is easier than in the woods where the drifts pile up, and we took turns breaking trail. Darkness comes early in the north country’s short winter days and about four o’clock the Chief headed into a stand of big spruce on the south side of a ridge. As long as I have been in the big woods I have never gotten over the way the old Chief goes about making himself comfortable under all conditions, winter or summer. A good woodsman has patience. He realizes he can’t change nature nor hurry her. He doesn’t fret because a river runs the wrong way for his journey, doesn’t cuss over being wind-bound for days on an island in a big lake. He knows he can’t lower the hills to make a portage easier, and in winter he won’t try to fight a blizzard. He learns early that rushing does not often get you where you are going any faster than taking it quietly. Wise in the ways of the woods, he realizes that often the longest way is the shortest. He never takes any more steps than he needs to, and he knows just where to sink his axe to bring down a tree with the least number of strokes. In the far away cities they call that efficiency and teach men to do things with the fewest motions. Up here they have no name for it, but just watch a good woodsman pick up a canoe and walk away with it and you will know what I’m driving at. And what’s more, you’ll probably learn to live longer.
The place the Chief had chosen for a camp site was in the middle of a little opening surrounded by big shaggy trees, and I knew he had found just what he wanted when he took off his snowshoes and used one of them like a shovel to clear a place for our camp.
On many another winter’s night we have slept with nothing but the sky for a roof and the trees of the forest for walls, but that night the Chief thought there was a chance of the wind springing up, so we had made just enough of a shelter to catch any drifting snow which would quickly form a cover on the balsam thatching.
I have made a winter camp by cutting away the low branches from a thick spruce to form snug sleeping quarters under the tree, but there’s always the chance that dry snow will sift down through the branches if the wind makes up. What’s more, the fire is likely to melt snow clinging to the tree and soak everything.
For winter sleeping in the open there is nothing to equal a rabbitskin robe. One robe is equal to at least two blankets and it insulates you from the cold in the way that nature devised for the wild things—by trapping the air in the fur. One method of making a skin robe is to begin cutting the rabbitskin in a circle in a continuous strip about three-quarters of an inch wide. In that way you get a piece several feet long from a single skin. If a strip is too short you sew it to the end of another. The next step is to twist the the strips around thin hide thongs until they form what looks like a fur covered rope. These pieces are then woven into a robe about four feet wide and eight feet long. You want them wide enough to roll in and plenty long enough so your head can be covered. Some Indians make their robes of flat strips cut lengthwise of the skin and then sewed end to end. The edges are held by a binding of strong cotton cloth. Rabbitskin robes are hard to get now, for few are made, the Indians preferring to buy blankets.
The only disadvantage of a rabbitskin robe is that it sheds hair from the day it is made until it wears out. I got tired of waking up with my nose and mouth full of rabbit fur, so I sewed my robe between two strong cotton sheets, which ended the trouble and, I believe, made the robe warmer than ever.
The largest blanket that can be found is none too big for winter camping, for rolling in your blanket is the only way to be sure of keeping covered while you sleep, unless you use a sleeping bag. The blankets you lie on should be spread out flat and those in which you will roll are pulled up far enough to cover your head. Then with the top blankets spread out flat over you, lift your legs stiffly from the hips and fold one side of the blankets and then the other beneath your legs. Then no matter which way you turn in your sleep you will wind yourself tight in your covering. The sides of the blankets beneath you can then be folded over and fastened on top with big horse-blanket pins if you need extra warmth. Sleeping bags are also fine for camping in cold weather, but I started rolling in blankets and skin robes when I first came into this country and I will always be partial to them.
The first thought on making a winter camp is firewood and plenty of it, for if a storm comes in the night and you have to go out and hunt fuel you may have a bad time of it. The wise thing is to get in enough to last you until daylight, come what may. And it is a good idea to put some dry birch bark and small dead limbs under cover close at hand to start the fire quickly.
Your axe is your most valuable tool in the woods. In cold weather you have to be careful of it, for in temperatures far below zero metal gets so brittle it may chip. Once in a while you find an axe with such a high temper that it is as brittle as a stick of candy. The only cure for that is to heat the head to a dull red and then plunge it into a can of oil. I’ve seen the Chief use bear grease, but any heavy oil will serve. It should be done with care and outdoors in case the oil catches fire. That treatment softens the metal and prevents chipping in low temperatures. Another thing to remember is to keep your rifle away from heat in cold weather. It is best to leave it outside your camp while on the trail. When cold metal is suddenly warmed it sweats and the moisture freezes when you take it out in the cold again.
The fire lit up the dark forest
While I cut balsam boughs for our bed and as cover for a shelter, the Chief felled several dead trees, for a standing dead tree is drier and makes better firewood than timber that has been lying on the ground. By the time he got back with the first load I had built up a mattress of boughs two feet thick and spread a deerskin robe to keep the cold from striking through. On top of that I laid out the blankets and our rabbitskin robes.
We were both hungry, but on the trail we never start supper until the night’s wood supply is stacked handy to the fire, which was already lighting up the dark forest and taking the sting out of the cold air. While the old man finished his chopping I built up a low wall of green birch logs back of the fire to reflect the heat toward our bed and filled the pails with snow to melt for tea water. Ice-is better than snow if it is handy. Suddenly the Chief appeared out of the darkness with a shoulder load of logs and gave the word to start supper.
While we sat eating in the good warmth of the campfire we got to talking about food—the right kind of food for the life you are living. We can’t understand why some people think that because you live in the woods you can eat anything and always be healthy. True it is that life in the open, is all in a man’s favor, but I have seen too many woodsmen with “misery in the innards” to know that you can’t abuse your stomach without paying a price, be it in the woods or the city.
On the trail when you’re working hard you can eat more fats and sweet things than you can when taking life easy. The fact is, you need those energy foods for hard work. Baked beans on the trail are nourishing and give a man staying power, but beans as a regular dish when you are not active will soon make a man wish he had never tried them.
When we are traveling the Chief and I always carry bacon, the mainstay of the woodsman’s fare, flour for pan biscuits, bannock, or flapjacks, powdered soups if possible, sugar (brown is most nourishing), rice, which is fine with raisins in it, and maybe some prunes or apricots for variety. We also like dried apples when we can get them, for you need fruit to keep fit. Then with some fish or game in season a man can live well.
The finest meal we had at the Chief’s trapping shack was broiled pike, which he had taken late in December and cached in the ice for use on his trips. That’s an old and good way of storing fish and meat in the woods in winter. When he caught several dozen fish the Chief chopped a trough in the ice about nine inches deep, laid the fish in it side by side a few inches apart and poured water over them. In no time they were frozen in solid.
When we went down to chop out some fish for supper there were wolf tracks all about the little spruce tree the Chief had stuck in the snow to mark the place, and plenty of signs that they had been scratching, but they couldn’t break into the old Indian’s refrigerator. We left enough for several meals later on. If you plan to use all the fish at one time, they can be frozen in the original fishing hole, first filling it almost full with broken chunks of ice. The trough method is best when you want to leave part of your catch for later eating. Unless you set up a marker, or take a range on the spot, snow will soon hide your cache and you may never find it again.
The wind does strange things with snow on the open stretches of the lakes. Often it packs the snow almost as hard as sand on a beach, leaving long curving ridges to mark the places where the ice cracks and heaves as it expands when the temperature drops very low. When ice four to five feet thick begins to crack you know about it, for the noise is like many shotguns going off at the same time. Then sometimes you hear a grinding sound like a monster gritting its teeth. The Chief says the lake is just stretching in its sleep. Along the shores where the drifts are deep, the wind sometimes whirls the snow into the form of waves just as if the water breaking on a shore had suddenly frozen.
Did you ever walk out on a February night in the north when the moon is bright? You can actually read by its light, and the outlines of hills miles away can be clearly seen. Up here there is what is called a dry cold, and even when the temperature drops below zero you can walk out in your shirt sleeves for a look around without even feeling it. That shouldn’t fool you though, for you can freeze your nose or ears in a mighty short time and not even know it.
Sometimes you meet a traveler on a winter trail and have to tell him his nose is white. Woodsmen used to think that the best way to thaw a frozen nose or ear was to rub snow on it, but people who have studied frostbite now say that the best thing to do is to warm the frozen part. If it’s your nose, warm your hand inside your shirt next to the skin and then cup it around your nose, but don’t rub. Warm water is also good for getting the frost out.
I wish you could step out with me and look at the sky one of these February nights. The stars are sparkling blue-white. It makes you think of flashing jewels hanging in beautiful designs on a dark background. Looking to the south the Great Hunter, Orion, seems to be watching Taurus, the Bull, and to the southeast of Orion is Sirius, the big Dog Star. Canis Major, they call him, and he’s the brightest of them all. I always like to look at the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear constellation, with its pointers lined on Polaris, the North Star, that age-old friend of men who know where to look for a true guide on the trails of the world.
The hush of the north woods in winter is often so heavy that you begin to think of it as something more than silence. At times it is like a strange kind of mist just beyond the power of eyes to see, yet so real you want to reach out to push it aside to let sounds come in. The quieter it is the harder you strain your ears without knowing why you’re listening. But when the hush is suddenly broken by a sound—the bark of a dog fox far away in the hills, the ring of an axe on frost-hardened birch, or maybe the scream of a lynx—you realize that in the still, clear air the range of your hearing has increased tenfold. The voices of men, the sharp whine of sled runners on dry snow, or the falling of a tree, which seem nearby, may be from five to ten miles away. Quiet enough it is many a night to hear a deer mouse snore.
Sometimes when it is so still you think there’s no breeze, the air is actually moving. At such times I can stand in my cabin door and hear the thunder of Indian Chutes fifteen miles away. And I often hear the Chief chopping kindling at his place over on Shining Tree Lake two miles away, and once in a while I hear Hank singing to himself. You have to be careful what you say about your neighbors in the northern winter. What is more, in the clear cold air you can see over greater distances than almost anywhere else. A hill that looks to be three miles away may be twenty miles distant.
On my way back from the Chief’s not long ago I saw a great horned owl sweep down through the pines and disappear across the lake. It is the largest and most powerful of its kind and a savage killer. The snowy owl, which often shows up here in the winter, looks larger than the horned owl because it has a much thicker covering of feathers. As a matter of fact it is smaller and weighs less.
These night hunters have to work hard for their food this time of the year, for the field mice, their favorite fare, are safe in their tunnels deep under the snow. They eat almost any small animal, such as rabbits and the like, not to mention grouse and other birds if they can get them. The horned owl even eats skunks, but I never heard of the snowy fellows going that far. When the lemmings, which look something like a mole, are scarce in the Arctic, the snowy owls head south in search of better hunting grounds. Sometimes they even go into big cities where there are usually plenty of rats and mice. I often wonder what a snowy owl would think about the way human beings jam themselves into one place where, if somebody didn’t bring in their food everyday, they would not know what to do to keep from starving. I have seen many of the big white birds, so I suspect this is one of those years when, for some reason nobody understands, the lemmings are scarce. The same thing happens with rabbits every so often, and then the wolves, foxes, and other meat-eating animals, as well as the owls, go far afield in search of new food supplies.
The great horned owl nests late in February and often the mother sits on her nest, which is usually the old home of a hawk or a crow, through zero temperatures and driving snow. The young are covered with a cream-colored fuzz when they hatch and need to be kept warm so they spend most of their time under their mother’s wings. Owls gulp their food whole and later on after it has digested they spit out fur and bones in neatly rolled pellets. You can often spot a horned owl’s nest by finding those little pellets under a large tree in a lonely part of the woods.
You may think I’m jumping the gun a mite, but, be that as it may, after the middle of February my mind just naturally turns to thoughts of fishing. You are right, spring is a long way off, but I can’t help it and so I either tie myself some flies, take apart my reels and oil them, or read fishing stories.
This year I made a rod and you’d be surprised to know what it was before I started. Well, this is the way it all began. Last summer a couple of young fellows came up for a vacation and brought along some fencing foils to have a little fun, both being pretty good at the sport. They were old foils and when my friends left they gave them to me, thinking Hank and I might try it this winter. I didn’t say anything, but I knew that the only kind of fencing Hank and I will ever do is with an axe around our garden to keep the deer away from the beans. Until recently those foils have been standing in the corner, then just for fun I picked one up and began whipping that fine steel blade around. Suddenly an idea came to me. There right in my hand was the makings of a fine bait rod!
From that time on I couldn’t rest until I had the thing worked out. First I filed off the end of the handle where it was riveted outside the pommel, the little knob on the end, and then slipped off the hollow grip and the guard. I found that the handle end of the blade was slightly curved, so I hammered it straight very carefully and then filed it round to fit the handle socket of my regular bait rod. By that time I was getting mighty excited, for I could see the idea was promising.
The blade of a foil as it comes is too stiff for fishing purposes, so I decided to take off some of the metal by filing. To make sure of doing a good job I nailed a board edge-up on my bench and cut a groove in it to fit the foil blade snugly. With a pocketknife to score the outline and a narrow chisel to dig out the wood, that was simple. I then laid the blade in the groove and with a fine-toothed file began to thin it down. You have to be careful to file evenly with long, diagonal strokes to keep the proper taper, taking off more at the butt end than near the tip. The idea is to file each side until the blade has just the right whip. That is where you need patience, for you can’t hurry it. I worked for several evenings until it seemed just right. Then I cut the little button off the tip of the blade, fitted an agate tip in its place and wound on a guide about halfway between the tip and the handle.
The night I finished the job it was snowing hard, but early the next morning it was clear and if anybody had seen me out there on snowshoes doing a little plug casting with what was once a fencing foil they would have good reason to think I was out of my mind. But it worked! Yes sir, I could send that plug fifty feet as nice as you please and just where I wanted to drop it, too. When I started making the rod I figured it would be good only for trolling, but a few casts convinced me it would also be fine for bait casting. As a matter of fact, I tried it on light plugs and then reeled in a five-pound stick of wood as a test and it handled nicely.
Speaking of making things reminds me to tell you that Hank has been carving animal tracks lately. He just takes blocks of white pine, draws the outline of the track which he copies from the casts he has made from real tracks, and then carves away. It’s surprisingly easy and they certainly make interesting decorations on the wall. All you need is inexpensive carving chisels which you can buy all made up in sets. Bird tracks are just right to practice on. If you have a dog rub a little soot on his paw, press it down on a block and then start hollowing out the impression of his track.
When Hank was over here a while ago he made me a split log shelf for some of my souvenirs. Nothing new about the idea, but somehow it always pleases me to see how such a shelf fits into the rough log wall. Simple as can be, yet strong and useful. Looks especially fine if you oil the wood.
I wouldn’t have you think I am given to bragging, but all in all my cabin is snug and has a fit-to-live-in look. By the table where I read in the evening I have a big barrel chair, softened with turkey-red cushions made by my sister, and it is cut to fit me and tilted for comfort. The only trouble with these chairs, as you usually see them, is that they stand too straight and tire your back after a while. I remedied that fault by screwing two tapered birch strips to the bottom. This gives the chair a comfortable tilt and at the same time prevents it from going over backwards. Very pleasant it is to sit there on a winter’s night when the wind is fingering at the cabin windows and listen to the kettle singing to itself over the slow fire. Once in a while it seems to doze and then wakes up and starts again on a high key that brings the dogs’ heads off the floor to see if there is a mouse about.
Wherever men boil water the song of the kettle is a song of peace and contentment and home. It always takes me back to the warm kitchen in an old farmhouse where after supper my grandmother would sit by the table and read to me from Swiss Family Robinson. The singing of the kettle was always part of it and once in a while when she stopped for a moment you would hear a beetle working under the bark in a stick of stovewood in the box close by. And after a while I would hear her saying, “My land! I do believe you’ve been asleep all the time I read to you.” Then I’d go upstairs and make haste to get into the billowing folds of a deep feather bed.
